THERE'S A BEAR IN THE WOODS

by ardavenport


- - - Part 2

There had been lights overhead. When they wheeled him down the hallway. Brackett. . . . a weird distortion of Doctor Brackett looking down at him from too high above. And nurses looking down at him. Which just wasn't right. He was taller than they were.

Kelly. That was Brackett's first name. Dixie and the others called him 'Kel', but it always sounded like 'Cal' when they said it. But he never used it. Bracket was 'Doctor Brackett'. Almost as if he did not have a first name.

Paul. He closed his eyes when he saw another face above him that shouldn't have been there. One of the orderlies. Not a bad guy. But he didn't really know him. He hung out with the nurses, but he didn't really compete for dates with them. Nice guy.

It felt weird when the hands grabbed him at the shoulders, feet, under his middle, fingers on his back where the hospital gown fell open. But it was quick, a moment of air underneath. Then there was a softer bed under him. A blanket snuffed out the cold antiseptic air, covering him. There were still more hands touching his arm, his wrist, reaching for him over the bed railing. And voices, softly spoken in the room. He did open his eyes and ask the nurse for some water. His throat was sore and the liquid felt cool and good going down. She smiled and wrote in her chart, metal rectangle supported by her arm and clasped to her body. That seemed to satisfy her. And eventually the movement and noises left the room.

Johnny sighed.

He felt more like himself. Less floating, less unwell, more like his arms and legs could move again. He just didn't want to move yet. Time was starting to slide into the right order for him. He knew he was at Rampart. That they were done with him in the ICU. And before that, there had been the man with a rifle pointed at him and then screaming and pounding on the squad. Driving away. Passing out on Roy. Blue light. Lights and dark shapes over him. Roy said something about a bear.

There was no gap at all in time between seeing Roy with blue sky above and then seeing shadowed faces and bright, blinding hospital lights overhead. Something was missing. He could feel fragments of things that happened to him. Bloodless sound and sight memories of lights and tubes and metal. But he did not know if they had happened this time, or were just leftovers from other injuries. He had been in Rampart before.

Something moved. He lifted an eyelid to see a white, knee length nurse's uniform entering. White cap on blond hair.

Laurie.

She worked upstairs at Rampart. Pretty, under thirty and she had always said she was busy whenever he asked her to go out. And now she was engaged to some doctor. He closed his eyes. He wanted her to just do whatever she had come for and go away again. She was also there at the end of his memory fragments.

"Hi Johnny. Look who's come to see you." She spoke loudly with that ruthlessly cheerful tone that meant she was not going away.

Opening his eyes, he saw her at his bedside. And two sky blue uniforms behind her. Roy and Burt Dwyer.

"Hey, how're you doing?" His partner gestured to Burt Dwyer next to him. "We were just downstairs and Dixie said you were out of the ICU."

"Hi, Johnny."

He pushed himself up as Laurie elevated the head of the bed. "Oh, hey. It's good to see you guys." Laurie wrapped a BP cuff around his upper arm. "Got dragged in to fill in on my shift, eh Dwyer?"

The other paramedic shrugged. "I don't mind. You've filled in for me plenty of times. But Roy never lets me drive the squad. Is he always that way with you?"

"Yeah, he's just like that."

Johnny's eyes flicked up to his partner who shrugged, not even hinting at the real reason why he always drove the squad out on a run. John Gage was marked for life. All because of that one time, when they were all new at Station Fifty-One - - - that one time - - - when he drove the squad out on a run.

And he turned the wrong way.

No harm had been done on that run. He had turned around and followed the engine. But the rest of the crew ribbed him mercilessly about it for weeks afterward. So now, everyone else at the station, even Roy sometimes, always gave him funny looks if he ever drove the squad out on a run. Even Captain Stanley, who hadn't even been there when it happened, but he must have heard about it from Captain Hammer, who was. It was just easier to read the map and let Roy drive.

Roy gave him a knowing half-grin. "Hey, the guys at the station send their regards." The BP cuff puffed up tight on his arm and then hissed slack again, Laurie listening with the stethoscope on his arm.

"So, how're you feeling?"

Johnny grimaced while Laurie grabbed his wrist. "Oooh, better I guess. Still a little fuzzy. I don't remember a lot." He cleared his throat. It still felt rough.

Burt grinned under his mustache. "Well, Dixie said that you couldn't tell Brackett your own name in the ICU, but you still managed to ask Becky Frobish what she was doing for dinner. That's how he knew you were going to be fine."

"Really?" His weekend was wide open, but he just couldn't remember seeing her face. "Well . . . what'd she say?"

"Uuh, I don't think she makes any dates in the ICU." Roy rested a hand on the bed railing, but Laurie interrupted, writing down his vitals.

"Well, you're looking a lot better now." She flipped the silver metal cover back over the chart with a snap. "I'll be back in a little bit with your dinner." She left, Roy thanking her as she went.

"Roy?" Johnny tugged the blanket up. He could feel a draft coming in under the edges of the sheet. "What happened?"

"What? You don't remember getting shot?"

"Yeah, I remember that and that crazy guy coming after us, but what happened after that?"

"Well, how much do you remember?"

"Roy, I don't remember anything. I mean, I remember that guy shooting me with the dart and passing out in the squad. And then . . . . everything just went blue and I opened my eyes and I'm here. What the hell was that stuff?"

Dwyer answered. "It was ketamine. Roy found a spare vial of it the guy's pocket after the sheriff's deputies brought him back."

"His pocket? Why were you going through his pockets?"

"Because he was unconscious after his wife clobbered him with a frying pan."

"What? That guy had a wife?"

Roy held up a hand, and Dwyer amiably nodded for him to take over.

"After we got to the end of the road the sheriff's deputy met us there. I was able to get Brackett on the biophone there and after you lost consciousness he had me insert an airway while the deputy went back to the house."

Johnny's hand went to his throat. "You started an airway on me?"

"Yeah. And an EKG. It was pretty serious because we didn't know what was in that dart then and some animal tranquilizers are fatal to humans."

"Oh." He cleared his throat again and put his hand back down. "Well, what happened after that?"

"The sheriff's deputy came back. With the man who shot you unconscious in the front seat of his car and his wife in handcuffs in the back. Their name is Conway, by the way."

"Hundcuffs? . . . . well, what happened?"

"She bit him."

"Her husband?"

"No, the deputy." Roy pointed to his bare forearm. "On the arm. Pretty deep, too; she drew blood."

Johnny frowned, trying to remember any of this, but there was nothing. "I don't get it. The run was for an animal bite. So, was it the wife who bit him?"

"No, it was the bear."

"I never saw the bear, Roy."

"There was a bear. Trust me." His partner raised his voice, not something that happened unless he was really upset.

"It turns out that Conway bought the bear a few weeks ago and he's been keeping it in a pen behind the house ever since. I guess he always wanted a bear. But it turns out that Mrs. Conway hated the bear and has been after him to get rid of it. Well, this morning, I guess the bear got tired of being caged up and bit Conway and ran off when he was feeding it. That's when Mrs. Conway called in the animal bite to the department. Conway is mad at her because he doesn't have a permit to keep a bear and doesn't want anyone from the county to see it. So, he storms off to go catch the bear with his dart gun, which apparently came with the bear."

"Uh huh." Johnny nodded. That sort of made sense to him.

"So, we walk in on this scene, Conway shoots you and we get out of there. But after we're gone Mrs. Conway comes after her husband with a heavy frying pan for running us off. Because she actually wants someone to take the bear away. So, about then, the sheriff's deputy - - his name is Markey by the way - - drives up on them just as Conway goes down. He wants to put Conway into his squad car and take him back to me. But Mrs. Conway is still upset and wants him to go after the bear - - which has run off again - - and shoot it. With a real gun."

Johnny scowled. "She wanted him to kill it?"

"Yeah. She really hates that bear. Anyway, while that's going on another sheriff's deputy shows up and he was able to help me with you, which is good because when Markey comes back, I've got to bandage his arm and look after Conway."

"Oh, well, sorry I was out. Sounds like you really had your hands full."

"Well, you couldn't help that. And I just about had everything under control when the ambulance got there. That's when Conway woke up and started yelling at everyone. That started his wife going - - she's still handcuffed in the back seat of the squad car. Then both of the sheriff's deputies are yelling at them to shut up while I'm trying to get you and Conway into the ambulance - - Markey handcuffed Conway to the gurney and he wanted to ride in back, too."

"You didn't let him, did you?"

"Of course not. He rode up front. But he had to give Conway a parting warning that if you died, he was personally going to arrest him for murder."

Johnny scoffed. "Oh yeah, that would have done me a whole lot of good."

"Yeah, but it got Conway all wound up so he didn't want to tell me how much ketamine he used in that dart. I don't think he really knew. The gun didn't come with a real bear tranquilizer, so Conway used ketamine because he could get it. Brackett told me that ketamine wouldn't have done much to that bear, too.

"So, anyway, we get to Rampart, mostly in one piece because Sal Korman was driving."

Dwyer grimaced. "That guy is going to roll an ambulance one of these days and I don't want to be in it when he does."

"Yeah, that ride was a little too exciting. And I had to have the deputies call dispatch to have someone come out and drive the squad into Rampart. And you went into respiratory arrest as soon as we get here."

"I arrested?"

"Yeah. Brackett got you through it. And your EKG was fine, but . . . . I really would rather you didn't do that again."

Roy finished with a tone of humorless stress and a trace of strain in just a few words that meant that he was working hard not to let what he was feeling go too far. Expressionless, Dwyer lowered his eyes.

Johnny grinned back. "Hey, don't worry about it. I'm not planning on doing anything like that again."

Roy's blue eyes looked back at him with equal amounts of relief and doubt. "You never plan on it. . . ."

The door to the room opened.

"Here you go." Laurie had returned with a dinner tray. "Roy, can you get that for me, please?"

"Sure." Roy helpfully grabbed the stand from beside the other, empty bed in the room and wheeled it over. He reached down, clicked the release and lowered the bed railing. Frowning, Johnny pushed back away from the intruding top of the stand that Roy slid over his middle. The dishes and silverware clattered on the tray as Laurie put it down, presenting him with a glass of milk, bowl of soup, crackers and a big cube of red jello still wiggling in its little dish. There were overcooked, mushy-looking vegetable-like lumps floating in the soup. Hospital food.

"Doctor Brackett didn't think you should have anything too heavy so soon after just getting out of the ICU."

He was neither nauseous nor hungry, but his stomach felt . . . . tense, as if it might need some encouragement to accept food. Real food. Not this.

Behind her, Roy and Burt were smirking broadly. They would tell the guys back at the station exactly what he was getting to eat. While they ate dinner. Mike Stoker was making fried chicken tonight, too.

"And I think Doctor Brackett wanted me to make sure that you ate your dinner instead of getting your friends here to sneak in a hamburger from the cafeteria downstairs." Laurie smiled sweetly.

Johnny had been thinking exactly that, but Roy treacherously waved to him. "We better get back. I'll stop by tomorrow morning and see when they're letting you out."

Dwyer opened the door. "Yeah, we'll say 'hi' to all the guys for you."

"But - - " They were gone.

"Do you need any help?"

Tight lipped, he grimaced back at her, not at all cheered by her offer.

"Well, Johnny, you always said you wanted to have dinner with me. Now's your chance."

Johnny wrinkled up his nose at the food on the tray in front of him, his eyes then going to Laurie's hands and that new engagement ring on her finger. "It's not the same thing."


- - - End Part 2